Solstice was two days ago. That day we got one chicken egg. Yesterday two.

Today five.

(The blue one and the white one are duck eggs.)

So, some critter or another figured out this is a great place to get a meal at night, apparently.

Saddest, though, is the fact that no one comes in to eat cat food anymore. There is a cat door into the laundry room, and a dish of cat food in there, and it hasn’t been touched in weeks now. Little H.P. Lovecat has had a tumultuous relationship with us: she started out pretty wild, then got used to us, then got used to the dogs, then became almost a housecat, then decided she belonged to Ruby dog. Then a dog we were sitting chased her up a tree. The next morning she came in her kitty door and tried to come into the house (from the laundry room) to rub about my ankles as usual, and I closed the door and showed her through the glass that the visiting dog was inside. H.P. looked at me, and looked at the visiting dog (who had chased her up a tree), and went out the cat door, and I never saw her in the house again. (I still feel guilty about that.) She was around for a while, and would come hang out with me while I milked, but eventually she stopped speaking to me completely. I think it was when Fry, the new kid, moved in; he barked at her. I am afraid that Ruby forgot that she loved H.P., and that she also barked at her. In any case, she was still coming in to eat, even though she wasn’t speaking to us or really letting herself be seen much.

H.P. and Ruby, before they were BFFs.

But now she’s not. I’m leaving the kibble just in case. My brain is simultaneously containing two true stories: one, she’s obviously dead, because that’s what happens to cats on Bainbridge Island, and what we always expected to happen to her; two, she’s obviously given up on us and moved in with another kind family down the street, and is living it up. They are both true. (Not originally intended as a Schrödinger’s cat reference, but hey, it works, I guess.)

More details are here.

This batch is nice-looking birds! You will not be sad …

This is the last batch of chickens this year, but if you want to be notified of our turkey orders for this November, and chickens for the future, please sign up on our mailing list for poultry notification and other news. The mailing list always gets first dibs.

We’ve tried several ways to break them of being broody in the past, but this spring I heard from some other chickeny friends about an effective way to do it: buy some chicks at the feed store, and sneak them in under your chicken. She thinks she’s hatched her (nonexistent) eggs that she’s been setting, and she moves on with her life as a proud new mama. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to us before! So we bought six chicks, three Rhode Island Reds and three Delawares, and we put two under each of the three broody hens.

Sure enough, next morning, each hen was proudly clucking on top of her tiny fluffy babies. Within a few days, each mama had led her tiny brood down from the nest boxes and out to learn about the world of the coop; a few days after that, the mamas had taken the babies out into the world a little bit outside of the coop door. The mamas widened the radius gradually as the babies grew, until the littles had learned all about scratching, pecking, perching, and generally roaming about the yard and then coming to bed in the coop at night.

Well, one of those mamas gave her little baby a bit too much confidence. One of those little Rhode Island Reds was really good at being a chicken until suddenly one day she decided she didn’t want to come to bed anymore. The first night we were worried — this was back when we could count how many chickens we had — so we left the coop open for as long as we could stand, then it got really dark and late and we thought we should protect the flock at the expense of one dumb chick. But Little Red Hen showed up again the next morning, all confused because everyone was inside and she was outside. And she has done the same thing every night since then. Two RIRs go to bed, and in the morning, three are scuffling around the edges of the coop — two inside, and one outside.

We can’t figure out where Little Red Hen goes to sleep. We thought she must be behind some electric fence, because she kept being not dead, so we looked in the goat pen and goat barn, but she wasn’t there. She’s not in the greenhouse, and she’s not in the old abandoned chicken tractor, or in the compost pile, and she’s not on top of the chicken coop. She might be in the grape arbor, but when it occurred to me, it was after dark, and I didn’t want to disturb her and cause her not to have a cozy place to be, on the off chance that she was snugged up in there and safe for bedtime.

It’s been at least a month now: we have a coop full of chickens, and one Little Red Hen who sleeps somewhere else safe. Every morning she is back out there taunting the other hens who are foolish enough to go sleep in their nice protective coop and don’t get to use their precious early morning hours hunting bugs and/or harassing the goat milker.

Good job, LRH. Long may you … hide somewhere else overnight? Good job!

CB’s is currently using organic nuts, but in about 5 weeks or so they will be switching to non-organic due to costs. (Not surprising — fuel costs are hitting all the growers and producers really hard this year.)

So I wanted to see if anyone has concerns about us supplementing the turkeys’ and chickens’ feed with non-organic peanut hearts. Their primary feed will continue to be either Canadian- or Washington-grown grains (the Canadian company is certified Organic; the Washington company is not), and they will definitely continue to be on untreated pasture at Day Road/Suyematsu Farm(s).

Please feel free to let us know if you have any questions or concerns about the non-organic peanut hearts as a feed supplement. You can always comment on the blog, anonymously if you prefer, or you can email us at farmers@dropstonefarms.com.

So, with the caveat that the supportive, involved folks are more likely to answer the survey than others, of the 18 respondents:

• Thirteen said they would likely make no change to buying patterns if we raise prices “a little”; two said he or she would order fewer birds if we raised prices. One said stopping buying from us was also an option.
• Everyone would pay at least $6/lb (someone said $30 per chicken). Note that we aren’t going to default to that! We’ll do the math with the average weights of the chickens, and see how it works out — maybe less! but maybe more. Since we posted this, there has been much discussion of grain prices going up significantly this year. Our current source has already raised prices, but another source we’re considering has lowered prices slightly (for now). Some folks would go as high as $9/lb (yikes!).
• Sixteen respondents would be interested in a CSA model. (If even just these sixteen folks get a few birds a month, we are set for a batch of ~50 monthly!)
• Two people would not participate in a CSA.
  • One said the CSA model hadn’t worked well for their family in the past. If this is you, we would really love to hear more about what didn’t work for you, and see if we can improve upon that experience.
  • One said that the up-front cost of a CSA membership would be prohibitive for their family — while recognizing the fact that the alternative requires us to be absorbing the up-front costs.

Questions & Answers

And for the folks who wouldn’t participate in the CSA, I would like to note that it is very likely that we could still accommodate you. We would of course purchase a few more birds than we had sold, to budget for losses a little bit, but in the past we have had fewer losses than we budgeted for, and ended up with up to 15 extra birds. It seems to me that we could just keep a list of folks who would still like to buy day-of instead and just call you. Would this address the issues you have with the CSA model?

Next steps
So, it seems like we can make this model work even just with the current list of people who’ve expressed interest. Next steps for us are to do the math to weigh feed and other costs against the average weight we expect the birds to be, and figure out what a reasonable price per pound and deposit will be. We’ll hash out some of the details of the CSA model, and start taking orders! This should be pretty soon, as we need to order chicks as soon as possible, and I want to leave the subscription period open as long as possible so everyone who wants in can sign up. We will start the first batch in March or April, to be ready in May or June.

One of the options we’re considering is not growing for sale at all. This is displeasing because we really like being able to provide delicious food for people. It’s rewarding to meet folks and hear that people are happy with what we’re doing.

Another option is to raise prices and continue selling as we did last year. This addresses the issue of making sure to pay ourselves, but not the stress of not knowing if we’ll sell all the birds, as well as the up-front cost of ~2 tons of organic feed, which we put on a credit card.

We also discussed growing just for ourselves and friends. As we started exploring that idea, we quickly realized it’s definitely not clear how/where we would draw the line of “friends.” We have become friendly with more than a few of our existing customers, and it would be hard to tell everyone no just because we didn’t know you before we started selling, or whatever.

Now we’re exploring another idea — changing our sales model up a bit and making it more like a CSA. We’d still do 3-4 batches of birds during the summer — probably June, July, August, September. Customers would sign up early in the year — possibly sometime this month — for their birds for the rest of the year. We’d ask a bigger deposit than the $5 per bird last year, maybe something more like $20 per bird, and we’d ask for it up front at the time of the order. We’d then place our orders based on how many birds had been sold (including a certain percentage to budget for loss, etc.). We would probably market this just to existing customers (blog readers and mailing list) and whatever word-of-mouth you all would do for us.

There are some significant pros to this model for us. We wouldn’t have to use a credit card for feed. We wouldn’t have to market at all. Any stress about not knowing whether we’d make enough to cover our costs would be taken care of, since we’d only order as many chicks as we have orders for. We’d have a group of invested shareholders who we could consult to help us make decisions like how long we should let the birds grow, or whether we should use a more expensive, but Washington-grown organic feed instead of the Canadian organic we have used in the past. It’s emotionally easier to struggle through a bad day in the field when we know we have customers who are tangibly invested in that specific batch of birds.

But there are cons as well. We wouldn’t meet new folks. It’s hard to turn people away when they get orders in too late, and that would still happen in this model. It’s a bigger commitment for us — we don’t have the easy out of giving up partway through the season if we get tired or if other work takes over! And from a food justice standpoint, it is frustrating to limit our audience so much; we’d rather connect more people to the delicious nutritious food even if they haven’t already made farmer connections (for whatever reason), instead of it only being accessible to people who already have access to it. (Maybe we can figure out a buy-one-give-one thing like Toms Shoes!)

So, we’re asking you for your feedback and ideas, particularly on the topics of raising our prices and the CSA model. We’ve built a little survey that’s completely anonymous and that will help us get some ideas about what factors you think about when deciding what/where/how to buy. It also has some room to let us know what you think about the CSA-ish model. If you have seen this work before, or have any ideas or thoughts or concerns about it, we’d love to hear from you. You can also comment here, though not as anonymously.

So please take our little survey and tell us what you think!

Apparently Google Maps was in the area right around 12 days after the chickens moved out there. They generated for us this lovely image of the grass and cover crop regrowing in chicken-tractor-footprint-sized rectangles after the tractor has moved over the field.

(Also check out this similar, prettier photo of Polyface Farm’s chicken tractor pasture.)

I’ve tried to highlight what we feel are the relevant characteristics of each farm’s birds — but just because I haven’t said that any given farm is organic, for example, it doesn’t mean it’s not — just that I don’t know about it. As usual please get in touch with your farmers and ask about their practices!

• Harley Soltes at Kingston Farm has Kitsap-raised, non-fast-growing, organic-fed, pastured birds — this is the closest to what we raise. We’ve been to Harley’s and can vouch that the chickens look great. Harley says:
  

  We will continue to process batches till January or February.We usually sell out to our regulars, but we will have more than usual in late October … Our birds are heritage breed Marans and Delawares raised on Organic grain and grass pasture. We call our birds culinary chickens as they have more taste and texture than typical broilers. Price is $5/pound and I use an email list to announce the periodic “Fresh Chicken Friday” when folks pick up birds they reserve via email response.

  To get on the email list, contact harley@kingstonfarm.net.

• Red Rooster Farm in Poulsbo has some Kitsap-raised broilers left. They’re a slower-growing breed, raised on pasture and fed the same certified Organic grains we feed. Call Shawna & David Lambert at 360-394-1686. They’re processing on October 10, so call soon!
• Similarly, I’ve heard that Karen Olsen at Blackjack Creek Farm in Port Orchard has some South Kitsap-raised, pastured chickens. She also sells raw milk, fresh eggs, and pastured beef! 360-731-3382 or bljkvalleyfarms@aol.com.
• Nikki Johanson at Pheasant Fields Farm may have some Kitsap-raised chickens left. Visit Poulsbo Farmers Market or contact her at 360-697-6224 or info@pheasantfields.com.
• Skagit River Ranch goes to several Seattle markets with Organic-fed, pastured chickens raised in Sedro-Woolley. Garth has toured their operation and we are definitely stealing some of their ideas — for instance, their chicks, from day one, are allowed to wander as far as they are comfortable, in what’s called a hover brooder.
• Farmer George at Seabreeze Farm on Vashon Island brings their (fresh only! never frozen!) pasture-raised, non-fast-growing, probably organic-fed chickens to market. They run smaller than ours usually do but are handsome-looking birds. You can find Seabreeze products at the farm on Vashon or at several Seattle farmers’ markets.
• The U-District market in particular (our favorite for food only, a very different experience from Ballard or Fremont) has a few other vendors that often have chickens, though they come from all over the state: Growing Things Farm; River Farm; Stokesberry Sustainable Farm (organic).

A couple of other resources that might be useful are the Puget Sound Fresh list of Puget Sound farms raising chicken (though we’re not on there! must figure out how to sign up) and Sound Food’s Quick Start guide to eating locally.

Thanks, everyone, for your support! As always, we’re thrilled to be part of an exciting and growing network of delicious local agriculture.

Details here: http://www.dropstonefarms.com/2010/08/chickens-round-3-pickup-august-21-23

Order here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-3

Skip the deposit, since the mail probably wouldn’t get to us in time.

That batch of 75 birds all got claimed by existing customers, blog readers, or via word-of-mouth, so that was nice too — less work for us to market them!

Coming up soon here we have another smaller batch. These guys are the ones that the raccoons got into when they were still at home, so the flock is small. We will take reservations for about 35 chickens, then a waiting list beyond that. Eight are already claimed, so get your name in soon if you want chickens! They will be ready on July 31.

Sign up for this batch here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-2. Don’t forget that the WSDA requires you to pick them up from us within 48 hours of processing — so you’ll need to be around on the 31st or Aug 1-2 for pickup.

Unless we sell out more quickly than I expect, I’ll be down at the farmers’ market next week (the 24th) taking reservations and meeting new customers. You can bring deposits to me there, if you like.

As always, thanks for your support!